With over a week left to enter the Aesthetica Art Prize 2013, we’re counting down with a run-through of artists selected in last year’s Prize. Joon Park was longlisted for his piece Ceramics Field Array in the category for Three-Dimensional Design & Sculpture. Boston and Seoul-based artist Joon Park is interested in the tensions between high and low cultures, partial and whole, centralisation and decentralisation. The countdown of artists will be back next week as we lead up to 31 August.

Park explores the notion that people have a very limited and myopic knowledge about what cultural conditioning and biases they bring to their perception of and interaction with others. His works revolve around the idea that cultural values persist and play a substantial role in our lives.

During the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), Korean potters produced simple yet unique ceramic vessels that embodied strict neo-Confucian values of formal restraint and ideal measure. These values still influence the lives of billions in the East Asian societies including Japan, Korea and China. The ideological grip of Confucianism, with its pervasive societal influence, exerts hegemonic power on the collective psyche. Using the association of Joseon ceramic objects with Confucian values, Park defies the neo-Confucian hierarchy by exploring different contextual and compositional possibilities. The artist’s use of pedestals signifies his interest in blurring the distinction between high and low culture and establishing non-hierarchical dynamics between objects and modes of presentation.